June 7th--Music.doc

June 7th
CANADIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY
C. Historical Addendum.
We cannot cover it all but we will cover the main areas of this industry.
Album oriented Rock/ Rock changed and was added to the mainstream.
A fairly extensive slide --> he will not ask questions from this panel of dates but they're
still good to know.
Canadian music industry can be divided into periods. PRE-1970s and what happened
after 1970s.
Pre- 1970s Popular Music Industry in Canada.
Few records were made in Canada. Canada had an assortment of companies that would
only make records for a select few categories. Records in Canada were never intended to
make fortunes they were for promotional use only.
Places you would hear rock/ rock oriented music.
Joni Mitchel and Neil Young among the few who worked in the Yorkville area started
their careers there. Yorkville made it possible for many new artists to explore and test the
waters for music performances. There were many festivals.
1958 Ronnie Hawkins (originally from Tennessee) brought his brand of Rockabilly to
Canada. Within a short period of time he brought a new flavour of music to Canada. 1966
- close to 1400 bands were playing in Toronto.
"Now That The Buffalo's Gone" Buffy Saint-Marie (1964) an activist singer-songwriter.
All of these Canadian Artists (from the slide 1960s/70s) had one common trajectory; they
had to go to the US. Canada limited the success of these Canadian artists. In order to
advance their careers they had to migrate south to get started.
Canadian labels
Quality - MGM
Musicana - EMI
Phonodisc - Motown
These were three branch operations (major record companies) in Canada. They go back
to the National Policy Act, 1879. Import Tariffs are to protect resources/ products of a
country. They were a tax that would make it more expensive to buy products/goods.
Motown was just below the Canadian/US Border; in order for them to sell the records in
Canada you had to drive them there (across the border) in a transport truck. You had to
pay 17% on each of the LPs that were in these trucks (you could have 20000 or more in
each truck). They made Pressing Plants from Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and
would bring one master copy of each LP so that they would pay less tariff (tax) on these
LPs. 45s were sold for around 90 cents each. Some Canadian artists were popular in
certain areas so they would make enough for that area in which they were popular and no
more. This limited Canadian artists opportunity for success. Then Sgt. Peppers came along and this was a record that cost 150,000 dollars and 6 months to make. The major
record companies in Canada knew they could not afford to do this.
By the late 1960s things began going backwards for Canadian artists (unless they went to
the states). The CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) issued a set of
regulations called the CANCON regulations. The government believed that the Canadian
would become popular if radio stations paid to play their music. As a condition the
government said that 20% of the songs played on FM needed to be Canadian Music, AM
Radio required 30% Canadian music. This was a great chance for Canadian artists at this
time to be successful. MAPL ( circle symbol on the back of CDs) Musicians,
Arrangement, Production, Lyrics. To be considered Canadian Music you need to have at
least 2 quarters filled in, it was difficult to fill them all in because we did not have big
recording industries. For artists such as Paul An